Let me first state, for transparency, that I used to work for Cox Communications for about 7 years (5 Resi, 2 CB), but left by my own accord around the time the West Warwick, RI call center was shut down. I am no longer gagged by my NDA. If anyone from Cox would like to contact me directly, feel free to PM me.
Also, this post is indirectly related to the thread below. I attend this thread to be a discussion of the recent failings of technical support, which I feel is a intentional decrease of skill and responsibilities in trade for lower costs and higher profit margins. I don't say this to insult Cox or any particular representative, so I won't be giving names, but to instead open up the lines of communications on exactly why technical support has faltered so much as of late. I see this failing being nonconstructive to both Cox's bottom line, their employees mental health, and of course, inconvenient to the customer.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30223644-RI-Slow-upload-and-modem-oddity
As part of the troubleshooting process for the issue stated in the thread above, on Wednesday 8/19, I scheduled a trouble call(TC) for today, Monday 8/24 between 1-3PM EST. As part of that request, I asked for a in house technician, instead of a contractor, because of the complexity of the issue and the access to tools a contractor would not have(mostly Edgehealth). I specifically scheduled the TC for several days out past what was available, and was told a email was being sent to dispatch to request as such. I understood it was not guaranteed. I called today to see if my trouble call was assigned, and saw it was assigned to contractor group that I have had negative experiences with, both on a professional level, and as a customer. I asked if either a in-house technician could be re-assigned, or if the TC could be rescheduled to a timeframe when a in-house technician was available. I knew the process was a little bit of a pain in the neck, but certainly within Tier 1 responsibilities. This lead to me being on the phone for over a hour and a half, and being cold transferred to 6 different people.
First some background for those who don't know. When a customer calls up Cox, what agent they get depends on what agents are available, what problem they entered into the automated system(IVR) and how busy those departments are. Long story short, if its busy, you usually get thrown to a contract group who are payed to take call volume pressure off of Cox. Not only are there several different groups in different geographical locations, but different departments and levels in those groups. These groups are separate to the field technician contractor groups that take trouble call volume. When the representative goes to transfer a customer, they have a choice from a long list of different groups to transfer to. These groups don't seem to be standardized and there is a lot of overlap within them. Also, the representives are either not trained to know which group does what, or they seem to intentionally dump you into the wrong queue, just because they don't want to take the call.
So I called up and the IVR saw I had appointment and asked if I was calling about that, to which I stated yes. This got me sent to a general (non technical) call center contractor group. She said she was not able to do as I requested, so I asked for a supervisor, so she cold transferred me to the billing department. Billing department said they were unable to assist (understandably) and confirmed I was cold transferred to billing and gave me the name of the person who transferred me. She then said she would transfer me to data technical support, but instead cold transferred me to cable technical support. Since my trouble call was data, the cable representative said she could not touch it (a lie) and had to get me to loyalty. I did not understand how retention, a sales group, could assist, so asked for her supervisor. She got me her supervisor, but even the supervisor said she was unable to open a data ticket and couldn't even see if a ticket was assigned. I asked if she had access to INAV, Cox's customer database, and she said yes. I then asked if she could look at where it lists my different tickets (which I have 3) and she did and confirmed I had tickets, but would not touch them. This told me she COULD see I had tickets, so I guess she just didn't bother to look because it's not something she typically does. The only way she said I could get what I needed was for her to transfer me again. So the cable technical support supervisor cold transferred me to data technical support. That representative said they would transfer me to a supervisor, and dumped me into a queue where I waited another 10min. That representative said she would "call dispatch" to make my request, but instead just called the contractor group assigned to my TC and asked when they would be there. At this point, I had been on the phone so long it was no past my appointment time. My only other option was to cancel my current trouble call and create a new one and request a in-house technician. I thought this unnecessary inconvenient, specially since I didn't even know why it had to go a field technician when there was a open ticket for packet loss from noise at the node. Also, two requests had been emailed in for a in-house field supervisor to contact me over a week ago. Around that time the contractor technician showed up, and said he will send a request for a supervisor fallow up, since the problem isn't occurring now, and he can't see signal history. He changed a few connectors, since I had replaced the single line from modem to house box, in case that was damaged from the storm, they were not Cox stock. This had no effect on my levels.
That is where I stand now. Hoping a contractor, not even a in-house, field supervisor will contact me sometime. To his credit, the technician that showed up was very polite and did everything he could, but the problem was just beyond his tools to troubleshoot. So to paraphrase;
1. Tier 1 technicians no longer have a way of contacting dispatch. This "was" as simple as filling out a form and emailing it, but since trying to standardize the different market, that tool was remove but never replaced.
2. Representatives either don't understand, or choose to misunderstand, how the phone queue system works, and use it to pad their call metrics. I see this as call avoidance, which used to be a terminal offense.
3. Tier 1 representatives no longer have access to Edgehealth, and are now forced to use a much simpler tool which was not effective in troubleshooting my problem.
4. There is no RI/CT local call center. Seems most calls get forwarded to a group in Texas, whom I will assume is a contractor group since Cox doesn't have service in Texas. This has the effect of almost created a Tier 0.5 whom you need to talk to before even getting to Tier 1. Also, instead of standardizing local procedures, Cox instead just removed procedures that were not done, or whom they didn't want to train new representives to do.
5. For one problem, I have spoken to more then 15 representives over several weeks and spent 5+ hours on the phone. I entered these all as "same issue" calls, so I can only imagine what effect it had on someone's stats.
Thoughts? Comments? Questions?
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